Happy Finish.

Channel 4: Inside the American Embassy

360° Film and Parallax Animation

An exclusive 360° first look at the US Embassy for Channel 4

Objective: Channel 4’s new show Inside The American Embassy gives the public and press a never-seen-before look behind the doors of the new US Embassy in London. Theirs was the first camera crew to be allowed inside the new Nine Elms digs, and they wanted a future-forward trailer to tease audiences before the show aired.

Our approach: This was the Channel 4 press team’s first venture into immersive content, and they wanted a bit more than your average trailer – something that was going to grab younger audiences but also appeal to their more traditional viewers. So we created two different promo pieces for them – a cinematic 360° film to excite tech-savvy Generation X, and a dynamic 2D parallax trailer to excite their more conventional audience – without having to shoot twice.

This was our first 360° project delivered in 8K, meaning the final visuals were beautifully crisp. We coupled these with ambisonic 3D audio to help guide and surprise the viewer throughout the experience. Our capture team used a special 360° approach to capture huge amounts of detail from inside the embassy and we added some extra embellishments later in the post-production process… see if you can spot them.

The 2D parallax trailer is made up of assets rendered out from the 360° shoot. This meant our retouch artist Vahakn Vorperian was able to handpick any camera angle and height to work on in post-production, allowing for a more flexible and creative approach. We partnered with 1.618 Digital to add binaural audio to the trailer, which emphasises movements created by the parallax effect and builds up an effective crescendo as the visuals pan across.

Results: Both versions of the trailer were launched online to promote the show ahead of its late June launch date.

You can catch the full show at 10pm on Channel 4, starting from 25th June.